Canary
Page 18
“Why is it you never mentioned that you and Bander had gotten back together?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Just tell me, Sean.”
“Because you two don’t get along and I didn’t want daily grief about my taste in lovers. Besides, my private life is just that.”
“How’s it working out this time?” Valentine asked blandly.
Sean didn’t reply immediately. “Who have you been talking to?”
Valentine hesitated, too. Then he said, “Press.”
Sean turned around to face Valentine. “Press? Just what did Press have to say about me?”
“He said you’d walked in this morning and found him in Bander’s apartment and that Bander had set the whole thing up.” Valentine tried to gauge Sean’s reaction to this, but the bartender’s face was blank. “Also, I saw Press leave the lodge with Bander this afternoon.”
“Oh?” Sean looked confused.
“I was wondering how that made you feel—finding Bander sleeping with Press?”
“It made me feel lousy, that’s how it felt, what do you think? It makes me feel pretty lousy to hear you talk about it right now. What’s wrong with you, Daniel?”
“Somebody tried to kill Bander up at the lodge today.”
“What?” Sean exclaimed.
Valentine leaned over and snatched one of the neckties from the pile of clothing. He held it up. “With one of these.”
Sean stared at Valentine a long moment. “Who’d do that? I mean, who’d be stupid enough to kill somebody when there were people all over the place?”
“Exactly what I asked myself,” Valentine said. He tossed the necktie back onto the pile. “Why are you suddenly deciding to get rid of your ties, Sean?”
“I didn’t suddenly decide to get rid of anything,” Sean replied sharply, stepping away from the revolving tapes. “Those clothes have been lying there for three days.”
Valentine held his closed hand out and then opened his fingers to reveal the small bottle cradled in his palm.
Sean’s brow wrinkled. “What the hell is that?”
“Is that what you used to subdue your victims?”
“What?”
“You heard me, Sean.”
“This is crazy. What in hell are you accusing me of?”
Valentine stood. He moved away from the sofa, speaking rapidly but evenly as he did. “All of the murders were committed in the middle of the night, after the bars had closed. The victims were regulars at Slate, and they apparently knew their killer. Each murder took place within a half-mile radius of this building, Sean—of this apartment. The Fenway is less than fifteen minutes’ walk down Marlborough Street. The building where B.J.’s two playmates were murdered is a couple of blocks in the other direction. Newt and Niobe live a block away from there. Beacon Hill’s just a short distance beyond that. All-American Boy lived on the edge of the South End, just on the other side of Prudential Plaza. That makes a circle—with this apartment at the center.” He looked at the bottle in his hand. “This is the real key, though. This is really what’s stymied the entire Boston police force for months.”
Sean stared at the bottle, then lifted his eyes to Valentine.
“You went after Bander in the forest today, didn’t you? What you didn’t count on was Clarisse also being in the forest, so you got the hell out of there and joined the contest just as you’d planned and nobody saw you—not even Bander.”
“You son of a bitch!” Sean hissed slowly. He stepped over to Valentine, pulling his arm and fist back. He swung, but Valentine darted to one side and landed his own fist into Sean’s stomach. Sean groaned but did not buckle. In a deft flash of movement he swung his leg up, twisted his torso sharply to one side, and landed the flat of his foot into Valentine’s solar plexus. Valentine tumbled back over the sofa and crashed to the floor on his back. The bottle flew from his hand and rolled across the carpet. Sean threw himself astride Valentine’s chest and slammed his knees down, pinning his arms to the carpet. Sean took a deep breath, leaned back and grabbed one of the discarded neckties from the floor, and then pulled himself back over Valentine.
“You asked for this, Daniel. You really did.”
Sean unfurled the length of tie between his fists.
With an unexpected surge of energy, Valentine buckled his body up with such force that Sean was thrown sideways but not off of Valentine. Valentine pulled one arm free and clamped it down as hard as he could over the left side of Sean’s collarbone. He dug his fingers into Sean’s shoulder so hard that his knuckles whitened. Sean opened his mouth involuntarily, his body stiffened with a spasm, and then he went limp. He slid onto his side next to Valentine, eyes fanning shut. Valentine wasted no time pulling himself up to his knees. He bound Sean’s wrists behind him with the necktie. From his back pocket he took his white bandanna and used it to gag Sean. He stood up, breathing hard, and looked down at his friend. Valentine ran the back of a sweaty hand across his mouth, aware now of a stinging sensation. His hand came away streaked with blood. His stomach buckled suddenly as nausea rose in his throat. Valentine choked and rushed down the hallway and swung into the bathroom. He vomited into the toilet. When he finished, he flushed, then leaned over the sink, twisting on the cold-water faucet to splash water across his face. He cupped one palm and took a drink of water. Nausea welled up again within him, and he stood to take a deep breath to steady himself. He stared unbelieving into the mirror.
Behind him stood Bander, holding a red-striped necktie stretched taut between his hands.
The tie was wound about Valentine’s neck before he could turn. Both men slipped on the tile and went to the floor as Valentine grabbed at the tie binding his neck. Bander’s breath was hot against his face as Valentine clenched his teeth. Guttural anger grated from Bander’s throat.
“I’m going to kill you,” Bander rasped.
Valentine got two fingers beneath the cloth.
“Just like I killed the others,” Bander whispered.
Making a fist with one hand, Valentine brought it down like a hammer into Bander’s groin. Bander yelped in agony. The tie loosened as he doubled forward. Valentine seized the edge of the sink and pulled himself to his feet. Bander grabbed Valentine’s ankle, and he plummeted over Bander’s prostrate body into the hallway, going down on one knee. In a flash, Bander was atop him again. Valentine pushed to his feet, and the two struggled down the length of the hall into the living room. Bander was on his knees behind Valentine, the tie once more fast about Valentine’s neck, the ends yanked taut.
“I’m going to enjoy doing it to you—”
Valentine crawled forward, but every inch of progress he made only drew the garotte tighter. He could get no breath into his lungs. Behind him, Bander rose slowly to his feet.
“—just like I enjoyed doing it to the others.”
Suddenly, without warning, the tie loosened about Valentine’s neck. Sean, on his back behind Bander, had raised his feet and kicked his heels back. An expression of surprise streaked Bander’s face as he reeled crazily over Valentine and fell heavily into the coffee table. The glass top shattered beneath his weight. One long jagged edge of glass sliced cleanly across his throat. A jet of blood made an arc and splashed horizontally across Valentine’s chest and face. Blood pulsed out of a severed artery in Bander’s neck as he slumped lifelessly to the floor.
Valentine rolled over and pulled the gag out of Sean’s mouth. He unbound his tied wrists.
“I just want to know,” Valentine said harshly, “how we’re going to convince the police that it wasn’t us who killed Bander just now.”
Chapter Twenty-four
“IT’S ALL ON TAPE,” Valentine explained.
“Lucky for us,” Sean replied.
“Lucky for all of us,” Clarisse said. “Val! Stop pulling away or I’ll never get this to stop bleeding.” She dabbed a damp cloth against his badly scraped temple.
Valentine, Clarisse, and Sean were in Vale
ntine’s office above the Slate barroom. It was after one o’clock in the morning. Less than fifteen minutes earlier the two men had returned from police headquarters on Berkeley Street where they’d been questioned and then signed statements about what had taken place in Sean’s apartment. Before they left the station, Valentine had called Clarisse to tell her briefly what had happened. She met them at the door and took them to the office, where she’d laid out medicine, bandage, and bowl to tend Valentine’s wound.
Valentine rested back in his swivel desk chair while Clarisse hovered over him ministering to his injury. Valentine’s shirt still bore the wide, jagged stain of Bander’s blood. Sean sat on the other side of the desk in one of the wingback chairs.
Clarisse was already showing the signs of the bad sunburn she had predicted for herself. Her face and arms were crimson and contrasted starkly with her white blouse and white linen slacks. Behind her on the green desk blotter was a pale blue porcelain bowl of water lightly stained with Valentine’s blood, a bottle of iodine, scissors, and several lengths of cut gauze and wide adhesive tape. Clarisse dropped the cloth onto the blotter and uncapped the iodine.
“Val, take your hands away from your face,” Clarisse said patiently. “This’ll only sting for a minute, and the pain won’t begin to compare with an attempted strangulation. Thank you. All I can say, Sean,” she resumed, “is thank God you decided to record your apartment noises and that Bander didn’t know you were doing it.”
“That tape is the only thing between us and a manslaughter charge,” Valentine said as he grimaced.
“On the other hand,” Clarisse mused as she replaced the iodine cap, “I’ve always thought it would be quite romantic to visit someone in prison every month. Talking through wire, baking cakes, and so forth.”
“You’re a source of undying strength in times of adversity, do you know that, Lovelace?”
“Turn the other cheek.” She folded and pressed a strip of gauze to his temple and then taped it neatly into place. “Sean, I think you ought to stay at my place tonight. I know the name of a professional cleaning crew—they specialize in homicide moppings up.”
Clarisse ran her fingertips over the last piece of tape and then moved around the desk between the two men. She sat on the edge and crossed her legs.
“So, I was wrong,” she admitted. “No one tried to kill Bander in the forest today?”
“No. I’m sure he saw you go into the woods and followed you, with the full intent of wanting to murder you. Something—someone,” Valentine corrected himself, “scared him off that idea.”
“Father McKimmon,” Clarisse speculated, “who was in the woods looking for his lost rosary.”
“Probably,” Sean said.
“At any rate,” said Valentine, “Bander changed his plan. He tried to make it look as if someone had attacked him. A perfect chance for him to throw us off his track. It’s hardly been a secret we’ve been looking into these murders.”
“I should have realized that,” Clarisse said. “Because if someone had tried to strangle him, he’d have had a case of ring around the neck like yours. Also, when he got up off the ground, I brushed some twigs off his back. But there weren’t any dirt or grass stains—there would have been if he’d been struggling.”
Valentine nodded.
“How much do you think Father McKimmon saw of any of that?” Sean asked.
Clarisse shrugged. “My guess is that he saw enough that the cops will want to talk to him, if he isn’t holed up somewhere desperately trying to induce alcoholic amnesia, which is exactly what I strongly suspect he’s doing at this moment.” She looked at Sean again. “I’m still not clear on why Bander was at your apartment tonight. I thought you’d never speak to him again after what he’d done with Press.”
“He called and said he wanted to talk, to explain some things. He’d just gotten there a few minutes before you arrived, Val. When you called up on the intercom, Bander just said he didn’t want to see you, which I didn’t think was strange. He asked me to get rid of you as quick as I could, and then he went to wait in the bathroom until you did leave.”
“If you knew Bander was just down the hall, why didn’t you call for help when you and Val got into a fight?” Clarisse asked.
Sean shrugged. “Because it was between Daniel and me. I wasn’t really going to strangle you, you know. I just wanted you to realize how stupid it was for you to suspect me.”
Valentine nodded.
“God,” Sean said, and rested his head back, gazing at the ceiling, “all this time Bander and I were sleeping together he was murdering people—friends of mine. All this time and I never suspected a thing. He never let his guard down once.” Sean looked at Valentine. “How did he manage to get away with it for so long?”
Valentine explained for Sean Clarisse’s theory regarding Bander’s gas-company uniform. “How many times have you seen a man in a utility uniform—or even a fireman or a policeman, for that matter—and not given him a second glance? All you remembered was the uniform, right?”
Sean thought a moment and then nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Exactly,” Clarisse said, “and when Bander killed at night, he made sure it was very late at night. That way he had not only darkness but time on his side.”
“He also had a bottle of chloroform in his pocket,” Valentine said, and told Clarisse how he’d discovered the bottle under the edge of Sean’s sofa. “My guess is that Bander hid it there just before I buzzed the apartment.”
“Chloroform?” Clarisse asked.
Valentine nodded. “He carried it in a poppers bottle.”
“Really?” said Clarisse. “But just one quick hit from a bottle of chloroform wouldn’t be enough to render someone completely helpless, would it?”
Valentine reached about and pulled his bandanna from his back pocket. “Not if he poured it on one of these and held it over someone’s nose and mouth—the way some people do with amyl.”
“Very clever,” Clarisse conceded.
“It was perfect,” Valentine continued. “Who knows where Bander got the chloroform? Maybe he made it himself. It can be used as a solvent, too, you know. So in case something went wrong and he got blood on his uniform, he could clean it up on the spot.”
“Do you think Bander’s killings were premeditated?” Clarisse asked.
“We’ll never know for sure.”
“Well, there must be a reason Bander stopped killing after Newt was dead.”
“The heat was on after that,” said Valentine. “A lot of attention in the press. And the police have been all over for the past month or so.”
“Also,” said Sean, “Bander and I were together almost all the time during that period.”
Clarisse uncrossed her arms. “Well, I’d just like to know one thing. Since B.J. is off the hook and Newt’s dead— who tried to kill me in the steam room at the health spa?”
“Nobody can prove it, but I’d bet anything that it was B.J. who put the broom handle in the door, but I don’t think she was trying to kill you. I think maybe it was just her and Newt trying to teach you a lesson for being so nosy.”
“What about Ruder and Cruder?” Sean inquired.
“Aha!” Clarisse chimed in. “I’ve thought that one out. The night Ruder and Cruder were killed, B.J. was with Newt. When Bander ran into them, he must have realized they were on their own for once. So, he suggested they all go off to that building undergoing renovation down the street from Newt and Niobe’s. He might have known about the place already— maybe he’d even worked on it, setting up the lines. Ruder and Cruder probably got excited about the prospect of carrying on with an honest-to-god repairman amid plasterboard and sawdust.”
“And apparently it was pretty exciting,” said Valentine.
“We were really lucky tonight,” said Sean, touching his throat.
“You certainly were,” said Clarisse soberly, looking at Valentine. “With Sean changing jobs and Niobe leaving also, I
could have been left to run this bar single-handedly—reaping profits left and right, wintering in Aruba, summering in Milan…”
“Clarisse,” Valentine said, “you’d hang yourself with black crepe for the rest of your life if anything actually happened to me.”
“Depends on the designer,” said Clarisse. She stood and straightened one sleeve of her blouse. “You both realize, of course, that the media will go absolutely wild when they get wind of what’s on that tape you gave the police. A reporter’s dream, having an attempted murder, a confession by same murderer, and the breathtaking—no pun intended—accidental death of a notorious killer, all on tape. You’ll be interviewed on the Today show. ABC will do a Movie of the Week about it. I think Faye Dunaway should play me.”
“Now that Marjorie Main is dead?” Valentine asked.
All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.
CANARY
A Felony & Mayhem mystery
PUBLISHING HISTORY
First edition (Ballantine): 1986
Felony & Mayhem print and digital editions: 2014
Copyright © 1986 by Nathan Aldyne
All rights reserved
E-book ISBN: 978-1-937384-95-1
For
Kate Mattes
You are reading a book in the Felony & Mayhem “Traditional” category. We think of these books as classy cozies, with little gunplay or gore but often a fair amount of humor and, usually, an intrepid amateur sleuth. If you enjoy this book, you may well like other “Traditional” titles from Felony & Mayhem Press, including (available as print books):
S.F.X. Dean
By Frequent Anguish
Such Pretty Toys
John Norman Harris
The Weird World of Wes Beattie
Marissa Piesman
Unorthodox Practices
Personal Effects
Heading Uptown
Daniel Stashower
Elephants in the Distance
Peter Watson
Landscape of Lies
For more about these books, and other Felony & Mayhem titles, or to place an order, please visit our website